0.13μm CMOS 230Mbps 21pJ/b UWB-IR transmitter with 21.3% efficiency

An ultra-wide-band impulse-radio (UWB-IR) transmitter for low-energy implantable and wearable biomedical microsystems is presented. The transmitter provides a power-efficient high-data-rate wireless link within the 3-5 GHz band. It yields an overall power efficiency of 21.3% at data-rate of 230Mbps while consuming 21pJ per bit. The transmitted UWB pulse train is recovered at the receiver with less than 10^-6 bit-error-rate (BER) measured at a distance of 1m without any pulse averaging. The chip is implemented in a 130nm CMOS technology and has an average power consumption of 3.7mW.